Since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, 21 Republican-led states have passed restrictions and/or outright bans on women receiving elective abortions.
The most stringent of these laws may be found in the state of Texas, whose state legislature not only passed a “trigger” law banning the procedure upon Roe’s reversal, but also enacted what critics call a “bounty law” that creates pathways for civil action from private citizens to those who procure or assist a woman in procuring an abortion.
These laws have flooded recent headlines in view of the plight of Dallas resident Kate Cox. Despite the insistence of her doctors that they held a “good faith” conviction Cox met the state’s very slim abortion exception of her life being threatened and having “serious risk of substantial impairment of a major bodily function,” the Texas Supreme Court ruled she did not — despite the fact that Cox’s preborn child has been diagnosed with a fatal condition that would endanger the lives of both mother and child.
The Texas Supreme Court added in its ruling that it was not the role of courts to determine if individual women met the state’s incredibly narrow abortion exception (despite issuing a ruling about Cox’s case), and instead directed physicians and the state’s medical board to help in such cases. The board itself has been rather mum on the issue, and some worry its voice will not be enough.
“Many self-identified pro-life and evangelical Christians have stated convictions that run egregiously contrary to both anti-abortion laws on the books and the ways in which those laws have been enforced and interpreted by the courts.”
Missing from this dialogue, however, is the blunt assessment that many self-identified pro-life and evangelical Christians have stated convictions that run egregiously contrary to both anti-abortion laws on the books and the ways in which those laws have been enforced and interpreted by the courts.
‘Abortion’ defined
However one wishes to define the term medically, Christian thinkers are generally agreed that “abortion” can accurately be defined in the following way: “The loss or expulsion from the womb of a living fetus before it has reached the stage of viability. Many abortions occur spontaneously (miscarriages), whereas others are deliberately induced. It is the latter which are the focal point of contemporary theological and ethical debate.”
This is the definition of “abortion” provided by Sinclair Ferguson and J.I. Packer (two men one could hardly describe as “liberal”) in the InterVarsity Press New Dictionary of Theology. Packer and Ferguson’s above definition is widely accepted within evangelical spaces. Both also note the following:
“The chief theological ground for a strict anti-abortion stance is the conviction that every human being is made in God’s image from the time of conception (cf. Gn. 1:27). Life-taking, like life-giving, is God’s prerogative, and man needs a special mandate to end any human being’s physical existence. Permission to kill is given by Scripture in carefully defined circumstances as a response to injustice (specifically murder and war, cf. Gn. 9:6; 1 Ki. 2:5–6), but no fetus has done anything to deserve the death penalty. Abortion, therefore, is morally bad.”
Ethical law of double effect
However, Packer and Ferguson note a common Christian exception to induced abortions which is commonly called the ethical law of double effect: “The Roman Catholic Church (which is otherwise implacably opposed to abortion) allows for a pregnancy to be terminated, under the ethical law of ‘double effect’, when a procedure intended to save the mother-to-be’s life (such as hysterectomy for cancer) results in the death of the fetus.”
“This teaching has been affirmed by numerous popes throughout the 20th and 21st centuries.”
This teaching has been affirmed by numerous popes throughout the 20th and 21st centuries, along with being included in the Catholic Church’s official catechism.
This doctrine of double effect is also borne out in the beliefs of most American evangelicals. Pew Research suggests 74% of American evangelicals believe abortion should be illegal. Within that group of anti-abortion evangelicals, 51% believe there should be legal exceptions to save the life of the mother. This qualified pro-life position represents 77% of Mainline Protestants and 69% of Roman Catholics. This also represents the official positions of multiple evangelical and Mainline Protestant denominations.
For instance, The United Methodist Church is the single largest Mainline denomination in the United States and is a global entity representing millions of Wesleyan-Methodist Christians around the world, with many parishioners residing in the Global South. The UMC’s Social Principles speaks to the issue of abortion in their Book of Discipline. It states the following:
“The beginning of life and the ending of life are the God-given boundaries of human existence. While individuals have always had some degree of control over when they would die, they now have the awesome power to determine when and even whether new individuals will be born. Our belief in the sanctity of unborn human life makes us reluctant to approve abortion. But we are equally bound to respect the sacredness of the life and well-being of the mother and the unborn child. We recognize tragic conflicts of life with life that may justify abortion, and in such cases we support the legal option of abortion under proper medical procedures by certified medical providers. … We cannot affirm abortion as an acceptable means of birth control, and we unconditionally reject it as a means of gender selection or eugenics (see Resolution 3184).”
The CRCNA and the SBC
By way of contrast, the Christian Reformed Church in North America is a conservative evangelical denomination in the Dutch Reformed tradition that has adopted a “double effect” pro-life position. Unlike the mainline United Methodist Church, the CRCNA is a member church of the National Association of Evangelicals and World Reformed Fellowship. It is decidedly more conservative than the UMC.
The CRCNA boasts a quarter million members, more than 1,000 churches, and two major centers of theological education (Calvin University and Seminary in Grand Rapids, Mich.). The CRCNA has a mainstream pro-life, evangelical view on the sanctity of unborn people. It ratified a synodical statement on abortion that reads as follows:
“Because the CRC believes that all human beings are image-bearers of God, it affirms the unique value of all human life. Mindful of the sixth commandment — “You shall not murder” (Exodus 20:13) — the church condemns the wanton or arbitrary destruction of any human being at any stage of its development from the point of conception to the point of death. The church affirms that an induced abortion is an allowable option only when the life of the mother-to-be is genuinely threatened by the continuation of the pregnancy.”
Likewise, the Southern Baptist Convention, the nation’s largest non-Catholic denomination, adopted a 2018 resolution titled “On Reaffirming the Full Dignity of Every Human Being” which reads as follows:
“RESOLVED, That the messengers to the Southern Baptist Convention meeting in Dallas, Texas, June 12–13, 2018, reaffirm the sacredness and full dignity and worthiness of respect and Christian love for every single human being, without any reservation whatsoever; and be it further
RESOLVED, That we affirm the full dignity of every unborn child and denounce every act of abortion except to save the mother’s physical life.”
Both evangelical theological consensus and real-world data from pro-life Christians demonstrate that the thesis of many abortion abolitionists and GOP lawmakers that “abortion is never medically necessary” is not a helpful or true statement, regardless of how one would like to parse the words or distinguish between various medical procedures. It also runs contrary to the stated positions of many pro-life evangelicals.
Whether or not the inherent theological tension between existing GOP abortion laws and widespread pro-life Christian convictions will translate to the voting booth remains to be seen.
David Bumgardner
David Bumgardner is a former BNG Clemons Fellow. A native Texans, he is a graduate of Texas Baptist College at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary.
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